A Mirror of Sainthood in The Curse of Chalion

This fantasy novel delves into the nuanced relationship between faith and works, worship and will, from the perspective of a human being who must find a way to live through paradoxes.

I don’t think about sainthood much. About the self-denial of medieval ascetics who wear sainthood as a title, like “Saint” Augustine or “Saint” Thomas Aquinas, or about the radical self-sacrifice of Christian martyrs who must be—if anyone is—saints each and every one. I suppose that biblically speaking I am a saint, but when I try the word on in the mirror of my mind, all my faults and flaws poke out at odd angles and it feels like someone else’s fine linen. I can’t help coming back to the thought of sainthood these days, though, because The Curse of Chalion has lodged it so firmly in my imagination.

The Curse of Chalion is a 2001 novel by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold. Set in a high fantasy medieval world, the story follows the adventures of a betrayed noble, Cazaril, as he seeks to rebuild a life for himself after escaping his fate as a galley slave. Returning to court as secretary-tutor to the princess Iselle and her lady-in-waiting Beatriz, Cazaril discovers his old enemies in power and the kingdom of Chalion falling into disarray. Iselle’s growth from impulsive teen to self-collected young woman is a fairly conventional coming-of-age character arc for fantasy, and The Curse of Chalion has a definite touch of romance about it as well—dashing knights, virtuous heroines, daring escapes under the cover of dark, and the chance of true love. This is all secondary to the central conflict of the novel, though, which is a strikingly theological, psychological drama about Cazaril’s role as an instrument of divine intervention. The titular curse will turn all the politics and romance of the story to tragedy unless Cazaril can discover how the gods intend to use him to rescue Iselle and the kingdom.

There are five gods in Chalion’s pantheon, who grant occasional signs, blessings, and (rare) miracles, and who at first glance bear little resemblance to the Christian God. As the novel progresses and Bujold continues to build out her world, however, its underlying structures ought to feel more and more welcoming to the Christian reader. I think of fantasy novels like The Curse of Chalion as potential worlds-in-waiting which unfold in my imagination and pull me in as I read. Like unexpectedly meeting a friend in a strange city, there’s a pleasant thrill of familiarity in discovering part of an imaginary world patterned after the Great Story. The speculative fiction and fantasy of the last few decades tends to be embedded in atheist and progressive worldviews, and is often skeptical of religious modes of seeing the world. It is rewarding for readers of faith, but takes a particular kind of energy to engage. The joy of finding unexpected common ground reframed The Curse of Chalion for me: it was speaking my language.

I've written previously about The Expanse, a science fiction series, which features heroes whose greatest acts are lonely self-sacrifices for their friends—exactly what Jesus calls the greatest human love (in John 15). This theme culminates in The Expanse with the Christ-like death of one to save the lives of many. My first inkling that Chalion would be a similarly welcoming world came in the first chapter when Cazaril, praying at a stranger’s impromptu roadside burial, entreats the gods for mercy: “Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.” This is a truth also felt by the poet of Psalm 51, who knows his sin all too well and prays for the grace of renewal. Mercy from Chalion’s gods brings restoration for the hurt, broken, and marginalized of society, including the gift of fresh purpose for the life that’s been healed. This means that prayer in Chalion has consequences! Prayer is a risky business for the psalmist and Cazaril alike, because it involves submission to a greater plan, a surrender of individual autonomy that’s out of fashion in contemporary Western culture.

In the middle of the novel Cazaril has another, more desperate prayer answered, and the consequences bring him to a holy man, one of the few “god-touched” people in the world—a zookeeper named Umegat, who introduces himself as a saint. One might suppose, as Cazaril does, that sainthood involves a great deal of good works, virtuous acts, and general holiness. However, Umegat insists, “the issue isn’t virtue. It is will.” Bujold sharpens the focus of her exploration of sainthood by imagining gods for Chalion who are truly good, infinite, transcendent beings, but whose influence on the material world must be mediated through the free will of finite agents. A saint in Chalion, Umegat explains,

is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He—or she—freely gives the gift of their will to their god. And in renouncing action, makes action possible.

This is where The Curse of Chalion turned the tables on me. Rather than simply inviting me into its world, the novel struck me with this thought and I had to stop reading for a moment. I have never encountered such a profound, Christian, theological expression in a fantasy world before. It’s not a total picture, not a useful definition for a student of theology, for instance, but as a novel Chalion draws us into a sympathetic identification with its characters as they live coherent, believable lives. Here it truly reflects one small piece of the unknowable biblical balance between God’s sovereignty and human free will. The best novels open their people up to us, immersed in their everyday, and hold up a mirror to our own lives. This scene in The Curse of Chalion was so striking to me because it was as if the characters shot a glance out of the mirror to ask me, “Would you choose to be a saint? What then have you given to your God?”

Readers typically understand novels in terms of their central conflict, the agon (a Greek word meaning “struggle”) that squares off protagonist against antagonist in an intensely personal battle of wills. The protagonist and antagonist in fantasy often share similar qualities, highlighting the consequences of their different values and choices: Bilbo might have become Gollum except for his love of the plain good things of life; Harry might have become Voldemort except for his courage and love for his friends. Presented with the Ring of Power or the Elder Wand, they emerge victorious from the temptation of power because they choose not to seize it.

The subject of sainthood makes The Curse of Chalion different, though, because when Cazaril’s mentor Umegat emphasizes that “the issue . . . is will,” he does not mean that Cazaril must prevail in his struggle by resisting the temptation to choose evil. Nor do the gods speak clearly with positive commands for him to follow. Cazaril is often forced to act with incomplete information, and surrender the ultimate outcome of his actions to the providence of the gods. Although the curse of Chalion becomes the defining conflict of Cazaril’s life, it is an agon too far-reaching for any individual to own. All he can do is play his part, and pray. As the novel’s climax nears, amidst the swashbuckling and romance of the plot—it’s quite a fun fantasy adventure—the central dramatic question is not whether Cazaril’s choices will lift the curse, but how the gods will answer Cazaril’s prayer for rescue. Under the surface, it’s a question of sainthood.

This twist makes The Curse of Chalion fascinating to me. It is not just a playful, well-written adventure, but one that uses the genre of fantasy to investigate a deeply theological question on a personal level. The psychology of Cazaril’s story delves into the nuanced relationship between faith and works, worship and will, from the perspective of a human being who must find a way to live through paradoxes. I found it impossible to read without feeling the mirror held up to me. Writers through the ages have argued about the powerful, dangerous quality that sets fiction apart from history or philosophy: short of refusing the entire project by putting the book down, it is impossible for a reader not to participate in the creation of a fantasy world. The Curse of Chalion does not attempt to solve the impossible knot of predestination and free will. It’s not a theological statement; it makes no explicit claims about the frame of reality, the nature of human spirituality, or the true Divine—that’s not the role of fantasy. Instead, the play and spiritual challenge of Chalion are woven together by the imaginative power I lend it, setting up the world and its dilemmas in the intimate place where my very sense of play resides.

The novel teases me with the difference of its fantasy world while peopling it with characters who think and feel and live ordinary lives just like me. By picturing gods who depend on agents to act on their behalf, limited in a way the biblical God is not, The Curse of Chalion throws into sharp relief the dilemma of how to live in the world when human choices can have real spiritual consequences. As Cazaril wrestles with his species of sainthood, I recognize the common ground we occupy. C.S. Lewis points out in The Weight of Glory that “there are no ordinary people . . . it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.” Faced with this responsibility in the real world, one must live in prayer if one is to act at all.

Fantasy often takes on a kind of heightened reality, with bright, dramatic descriptions of the world, characters who are full of personality, and significant events that move swiftly; none of it is quite ordinary. The Curse of Chalion harnesses this quality to imagine a world where heaven and earth are very close together, the physical and spiritual realms intimately linked and responding to each other. Rather than asking readers to suspend our disbelief for the sake of the story, The Curse of Chalion invites us to recognize that ordinary life is more real, more connected to a greater reality, than we typically suppose. Makoto Fujimura, a leading Christian artist and thinker, suggests in Art and Faith: A Theology of Making that art is a practice of attention, of looking and listening and tasting the world in all its beauty and brokenness. Modern fantasy has its roots in explicitly Christian authors like George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, whose books all recast the biblical story of redemption in different ways. Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion is a novel for today because it is more immediate, familiar, and direct in calling our attention to what I might call the challenge of sainthood: why would anyone choose to give up their will to a god they can only imperfectly know? What kind of a person would do so?

Would you?

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold (HarperCollins, 2001)

Text: Joel Faber

Photography: Wladimir Figueiredo